Winding up the company I knew would be a big process. I knew a lot of complications would arise and that everything had to be well thought out before the execution. But I must be some sort of psychic if I could predict for instance that the electricity board would case for extra power consumed in 1995 would surface now.
What more can you expect from these guys? And I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the receipts you get from the KSEB. If you don't treat it with the utmost respect and care that it deserves, it will most likely just tear in your hand. And to hope that we would have receipts from ten years ago. Looking through the files, as obvious, the receipts from the preceding and the subsequent month, of the month in question had miraculously survived. Useless junk always seems to do that, unless it senses that it might be needed at a future date, when it will disappear.
To start with, they first assess us for extra power used during a time of power cut in 1995-1996. I can't believe that future generations will not know of something as ludicrous as a power cut, where they actually give a quota of how much power an industry can consume. I guess I was lucky enough to not have to deal with the far more frustrating License Raj or the MRTP act. Anyway, returning to the topic of discussion, they issue us a notice in February, 2000 for extra power that we had used between January and August of 1995. If they had informed us of the extra consumption earlier, like after the first month for instance, we would rather have closed down production than pay the exorbitant rates and penal rates charged. We thought we could fight it based on the law of limitation, that you can't claim money if you haven't claimed it for three years, but apparently, those rules aren't applicable to the Electricity Board.
Anyway, we give a petition in the high court which presumably took six years to go through the case and finally directs us to negotiate with the Electricity Board. If that was the decision going to be made, I would have taken all of ten minutes to arrive at it. Now the board says we pay this with a "concessional" rate of interest of 12% as against their "normal" rate of 24%. Hadn't the Supreme Court come out with a ruling saying that those interest rates amounted to extortion?
Luckily, the solution is much simpler than the problem. In two words, competition and technology. Competition will force the State Electricity Boards (SEBs) to either become more competitive or shut shop. Personally, I feel they should just shut shop, and use license fees collected from private operators to distribute power to economically unviable areas, where private corporations might hesitate to go. Technology will free up hundreds on man hours, and possibly reduce the labour force by a sizeable percentage.
How did BSNL the state owned telecom giant transform itself. Around 15 years ago, there were no STD and ISD booths, and people had to wait in hour long queues in telegraph offices to make a long distance call, or dial a “Trunk” call. To those of you who had managed to blank out memories of trunk calls, sorry for bringing it up. Anyway, even after the introduction of direct dialing services, lines were always down or congested, and the people in the telecom department were amongst the rudest of the government staff. But look at them now, they offer state of the art services, the cheapest deals, and definitely acceptable customer care. They have retained their position as the leading service provider in the country, though “evil multinational corporations” have entered the market. And what about the common man, did he lose out on the deal? I think not, considering that to make a long distance call, one had to wait till ten at night and try a hundred times and finally pay 8 bucks a minute. Contrast that to now with India One, one buck a minute to anywhere at any time of the day.
Searching on the net, I cant find any evidence of massive DoT employees strikes or anything when it was corporatised. I wonder why the government hasn’t implemented a similar thing for the electricity boards. The electricity act of 2003 was supposed to change all this, but nothing seems to have happened yet. This is possibly due to more interest groups pushing the telecom reform, or stronger unions in the SEBs.
One last note on the KSEB union: The pay of the KSEB employees, like all government employees, are fixed by pay commissions and what not. However, one fine day, the employees start giving higher salaries to themselves. By the time the government caught on, or decided to act, several crores of rupees had already been disbursed over several months. A commission headed by a high court judge was set up to “review” the matter. On receiving several death threats from the union, the judge politely decided to leave. The matter got buried in some paperwork and not one employee has even been retrenched.
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